T-Mobile's Forever Upgrade plan was offered around the release of the iPhone 13 in 2021. Those on a premium plan like Magenta MAX were guaranteed an upgrade with a trade-in value of up to $800 every two years toward the latest iPhone model. Since December 7th, 2023, Forever Upgrade customers were moved into the Yearly Upgrade program which is associated with Go5G Next and other T-Mobile premium plans.
This "mix up" is happening too many times to be merely the fault of a random customer
Yearly Upgrade allows customers to upgrade annually instead of every two years. With this plan you can trade in your phone for the latest model if you've held it for at least six months and paid off at least 50% of the cost of the device (which would mean that you've made at least 12 monthly payments). When you trade in your phone, T-Mobile will pay off the remaining 50% of the installment balance allowing you to buy a new phone by creating a new installment plan.
A T-Mobile subscriber who was a Forever Upgrade member and transitioned to Yearly Upgrade wrote on Reddit that he upgrades his iPhone every year. He typically heads to a T-Mobile store to hand in his trade so that, in his words, "Crazy shit doesn't happen." What kind of crazy shit? The craziest shit you can imagine. The Redditor, in his post, mentions stories about phones being shipped to fulfill the purchase of new devices and for some reason they get lost leaving the customers with nothing. No trade, no new phone, nothing.
Have you ever had a similar problem?
Yes. A phone I sent in was mysteriously lost.
50%
No. Luckily this has never happened to me.
50%
But this year, he had to ship the iPhone being traded in to T-Mobile. That's because the rules of the Yearly Upgrade plan call for the T-Mobile subscriber to ship the phone being traded in to T-Mobile. This guy almost did everything the right way. He made a video of himself dropping off the box containing his iPhone to UPS. But what he failed to do was show that the box he gave to UPS contained the specific phone with the unique IMEI number that T-Mobile was expecting.
Email from T-Mobile to its customer calling out his mix-up. | Image credit-Reddit
Sure enough, the time that he has to ship his trade to the carrier, the customer receives an email from T-Mobile that states that a phone he shipped was received but it wasn't the iPhone 16 Pro with the IMEI number 357324795689275. This is important because under the rules of the Yearly Upgrade plan, the unit being traded in has to be the exact phone that the customer received from T-Mobile the previous year. The email says that the customer must have had a mix up and sent the wrong phone.
Instead of being able to trade the phone in for an iPhone 17 Pro, T-Mobile credited the customer with $504.07 which was applied toward his installment balance for the iPhone 16 Pro that he claims to have actually traded in. The email also stated that the customer might have lost access to applicable promotional offers. nstead of having a new iPhone 17 Pro, the customer ended up with nothing. He lost his new phone, and he lost the phone he shipped to T-Mobile which he claims was the iPhone 16 Pro he received from T-Mobile the previous year.
If you have to ship a phone back to your carrier, one T-Mobile customer posted his process
Others had the same issue with one T-Mobile subscriber writing that he was credited with $1 toward his current balance, which should have been wiped out by the trade in. If you do have the Yearly Upgrade program with T-Mobile, when it comes time for you to ship back your current phone, you should follow the advice of one T-Mobile subscriber who revealed his process for returning a trade in. He wrote, "I take pictures of the weight of the box, the phone then a picture of the phone in the box on the scale, it sealed and get a receipt when dropping off at USPS when they scan it in. It sucks you have to do all this, but I've been burned before."
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As for the reason why this is happening, another T-Mobile customer, whose shipped trade-in was also lost, had a sinister theory that could be true. "I think there is massive fraud going on with the contracting company. We had to deal with a lost phone for months while T-Mobile kept our account in the negative by $1,300."
When returning a phone to a carrier, assume the phone will get lost and document everything you can via a photograph or video. Doing so might save you a thousand dollars or even more.
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